The initial "informal chat" was actually an interview on campus.

I was asked a mix of technical questions (stress/strain diagram, necking, etc.) and design questions based on an example in my resume. They asked me to redesign a project I had worked on based on fake client feedback. There was also a brain teaser.

Some discussion covered finite element analysis (FEA) work I had done after my freshman year, with some in-depth questions on how FEA works.

The second interview was a 30-minute phone interview with two hardware engineers. I expected technical questions but received none. The interview focused entirely on my design process and was rather ambiguous.

Advantages and disadvantages of tetrahedron and hexagonal FEA elements.